Before Andrés Manuel López Obrador became President of the Republic in 2018, on countless occasions, he criticized the security policies of the presidents in power, particularly Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006-2012) without ignoring that of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), with whom, by the way, once sitting in the Águila Chair he was very condescending.
At the time, neither Calderón nor Peña accused López Obrador, the long-time candidate, of being the personero of misfortune, an adversary who used the pain caused by violence and insecurity for political or electoral gain. In fact, to a large extent the Tabasco native’s triumph is due to the fact that his speech against Calderón for the war on drugs and against Peña, whom he invariably accused of being corrupt, had an echo in society.
Every time a high-impact act of violence occurred in any state of the Republic, López Obrador demanded that the presidents assume their responsibility, that they directly address the problem with the security cabinet, that they not excuse failed policies or administrative pasts, that the responsibility for the security of Mexico and the Mexicans was exclusively theirs, at the time of Calderón, after Peña, and he even harangued Vicente Fox and Ernesto Zedillo in the same sense.
The founder of Morena criticized, of course in 2007, in his 2012 campaign, and also in 2018, the war on drugs that was the basis of the security program and strategy in the Felipe Calderón Hinojosa Administration, and he gloated endlessly about the failed results, he blamed the PAN member for the horrors of drug trafficking, and he celebrated and capitalized, like no one else, on the arrest in the United States, the judicial process and the sentence in that country against Genaro García Luna, who had been Secretary of Security precisely in Calderón’s cabinet. Then he systematically demanded that both the PAN member in his time, and the PRI member in his, change their security strategy because it was evident that they were not working.
Claudia Sheinbaum, in her campaign, also made electoral political use of those speeches by López Obrador, when she had not done so before. Being Secretary of the Environment of Mexico City, Delegation Head of Tlalpan and Head of Government, the current President was always a very dedicated official to her work, focused on carrying out her projects, and determined to leave, with her work in each of her assignments, a favorable impact on society. He did not criticize the “adversaries” of his political leader, nor did he focus efforts on anything other than the current assignment, be it the Secretariat, the Delegation, or the City.
But from supporting López Obrador’s systematic attack when she was in opposition to the governments in power, the President transitioned, or became, an authority installed in intransigence, which does not allow citizens, any sector, part of society, and much less the opponents of political parties, to criticize her security strategy, or point out her indolence or demand that she be responsible for what is happening in the country, particularly in terms of insecurity and violence.
Thus, it continues to evade its responsibility to pacify the country, clinging to a hollow discourse in which the past is already irrelevant when the present is a bloodbath with no masterminds arrested, no cartels extinguished, nor public servants investigated for acts of corruption, from money laundering, tax huachicol, inexplicable and possibly illicit enrichment, among a long list of high-impact crimes.
Added to this criminal trail is now the crude execution of Carlos Manzo, Mayor of Uruapan, just on November 1, when, accompanied by his family, he inaugurated the Candle Festival, in the run-up to the Day of the Dead.
A horrific tragedy that draws the current Mexico, not that of the past, the current one when the Mayor of an area dominated by drug cartels who requested institutional support from the Government of the Republic, which he criticized considering it a failed strategy against organized crime by the federation, who was in Morena and then abandoned the movement to run as an independent candidate for the Mayor of Uruapan, who sought a life of security and tranquility for his governed, who attacked criminals, and who was always left alone… Until they killed him.
And when the unprecedented event outrages society in many regions of Mexico, and also activists, sector leaders or members of other parties who now demand, from the opposition or society, what López Obrador demanded of Calderón or Peña, that the President assume her responsibility, that she stop blaming the old past for the country’s current problems, then for the Government of the Republic they are not valid, legitimate voices, as they were when they were not in the Government, but rather taken advantage of. voters who must be investigated and pointed out.
Uruapan matters to Mexicans right now, like Guerrero, or Tamaulipas, or Baja California, or any state in the country that is taken over by organized crime and abandoned by the authority sworn to protect its residents, regardless of whether, as in the past, they are now the opposition who are demanding it, or civil society groups that simply do not want to live in a country taken over by crime here and now.